I was out in the workshop this evening making a simple box. I mitred the box and needed to spline the corners. I made this simple jig to aide in creating a grove for the spline.

It’s a 45 degree “rest” for the mitred board to sit on as you slide it over the blade.

Here is a pic of a test board on the jig. The jig is placed the width of the mitre away from the fence. If you have a gap under your fence like we do, you will need to add a piece of material, (we used MDF) to your fence. Anything will do, as long as it covers the little gap.

Next, the jig is held to the table with MagSwitch magnets. We used 2. Could use clamps, but MagSwitch is hard to beat.

With the jig in place, turn on your saw and slide your board through. Super easy.

Cool jig! I am kinda a noob, so hopefully I don’t sound too foolish, but I always thought that this type of spline was easy to cut simply by angling the blade 45° and running the stock with the miter fence? Is there a benefit by doing them this way instead?

gfadvm you certainly could do this on the router table. I will do a quick sketch and show you.

pneufab – you are right, the only trouble is, you would need to but the fence on the other side of the blade from what i’m thinking. Doing it the way I put above will have no real limit on the panel size you are splining. well within reason.

I am thinking though, it could still be an effective jig as it’s 45 degrees to the table. Perhaps one may wish to spline mitres without taking their blade out of 90 degrees. lol. I may be grasping, but I think it’s still useful though pneufab’s post will surely be the best option for most :)

Michael, Thanks so much for the cool sketch. That’s what I had pictured in my feeble mind. I’m gonna try your jig on the router table with the slot cutters for my boxes. The tablesaw would be the way to go for bigger projects but I like the option of cutting different width splines by raising/lowering the router and making a second pass rather than setting up a dado stack for a small project. Thanks again.